I have a dream, but this dream will cause my parents despair.
My parents have a dream of me, what will make them proud, but this will cause me despair.
Jesus said," If I honor myself, that honor is nothing."
Jesus is correct, however there is nothing wrong with doing what you want so long as you are not doing something wrong.
Your parents are NOT the dictators of your life. You still have to honor them. Please do not take this out of context, you may entirely disobey someone and honor them. This however is not possible with God, you cannot Honor God and disobey Him at all.
You are free to go out and be a man and make your own decisions. If you parents will have trouble with this, then they do not honor you!
I disagree with the above. I’ve been struggling with a simular problem for a while. there are a lot of things my parents want of me that I disagree with and for a long time I’ve not only disobeyed them, but I hid from them and lied to them about it. it pretty much destroyed me as a person, tore my relatinoship with my parents to shreds and harmed my relationship with Christ in the process.
God poses himself as a parent throughout the entire bible and he gives specific guidlines for how we should treat him. all of these are very much like how we are to treat our parents. Obeying our parents is a very important part of that. the bible outright says “children obey your parents in the lord for this is right” (Esphsians 6:1).
the only condition this gives is that obeying them is to be “in the Lord”. meaning, agreeable with God. if your parents are asking you to kill somebody, you would be wise to disobey because it isn’t right with God.
so what you really need to be asking yourself is: what does God want you to do with your life? is he favoring your dream or your parents?
ultimately, you’ll be happiest doing what God wants in your life. and your dream should be his.
As my quote says “Wheresoever you go ; go with all your heart.”
I feel the quote from the J.C. man is better off as a statement regarding humbleness. He believed that praising himself was a faulty manuever. Although I certainly believe it could be up for personal interpretation.
As far as your parents they will/should love you regardless of what you do. If they feel you are spitting in their face due to your choice so be it.
Life is but a fleeting moment, to spend one moment doing that which one does not desire; is foolishness.
This is a loose quote from Hagakure.
So you dont have the strength to tell you parents that you do not want what they want and they will not be able to force you? This is disobeying them, but are you still dishonoring them? No.
Your usage of those passages are struck down with your own post. You should obey your parents because are supposed to raise you up into being a faithful servant of the Lord. This in no way means that your parents get to decide how your life is going to be against your will.
And on a side note you most certainly should never Equate the parental role of God with the earthly one. No matter where I seem to go on this board people just continually, non-stop, keep equating God to humans.
God is beyond us, He should never be brought down to our levels, He needs to stay right where He is, Creator!
Gods parental definition is very different from that of your ‘mundane’ parents.
On the last sentence I will agree, you will be most happy doing God will in your life. But dont forget, God will call you to your purpose if you have one, and you will almost never forsee if this is compatible with your parents wishes or not. Follow God not your parents in this fashion. I would not over analyze this too much. God gave you free will and a spirit that will help goad you into the direction He wants. Sometimes… God will flat you MAKE YOU! On occasion people feel sheep hearded into a direction. Sometimes its just God not letting you have your choice in the matter.
In Dust and Ashes, welcome to the forum 
now,
If people choose to bring god to their level of understanding do not judge or scold them because you have an avid love for your lord :0) He would stay where he is regardless of whether man personifies him or not. I don’t believe in him but that doesn’t mean I can’t defend those who wish to. 
But the problem with that is that when they do, they absolutely lose sight of what God is suppossed to be. In fact when they do that, they are no longer talking about my God.
Part of the qualities and qualifications of God is all the wisdom, power, and glory He has above us. When they drag Him down to our level they are intentionally disqualifying Him based on our limited understanding. This actually works against being able to understand God.
Most people I see that do not like God, usually have this complex with them. They outright place themselves above God because all they have ever heard is that God is no better than they are. They often confuse their petty intellect as being somehow equivilent to God’s. Because of this they see God as a construct of mans mind and proceed to attack Him for it.
Not even the most devout of Christians can fully understand God. God keeps a hand in front of our eyes to keep us blind to Him. If you wish to find God, then you must seek Him and most people are to weak or faint of heart to even attempt this. They cant stand the thought of having to turn away from their iniquity to understand a bit of God.
I’m not really sure what you mean by your first 2 paragraphs. maybe there was a miscommunication. but I’ll skip it for now.
I don’t equate God with humans at all. I know that God is far above us and our understanding and I don’t mean to ever belittle him by saying he is like my parents, but I do believe that he gave us certain roles on this earth to create a picture of how he is and how he wants us to treat him. for instance, marriage between man and woman is a picture of our relationship with God. parents and children is a picture of our relationship with God. pretty much everything points to God. and when we think about how we treat others, we are to understand that that is how we are to treat God.
I don’t know if that made it clearer or even worse, but I tried.
and for the record, my parents are not mundane.
Astral ~
!
your concepts are right. Except this one. You said Jesus is correct then you made a contrary, which then override the statement which you said Jesus is correct.
Dust ~
Dust has my favor, for he is backing up with his experience.
Just in case not to lose track of my intention.
Which would you choice for those who wants to make a choice:
Would you be a justice man, and establish justice for the society and make your parents proud and people more happier ; Or, be rich then renounce life, then save the souls of humanity.
Put it simply would you rather be a great king, or a redeemer?
honestly, I couldnt’ tell you. both have their points. personally, I want to be what God wants me to be and I want to do what is needed. It’s not always easy or ideal in some ways, but my goal is to please God. Right now, I’m studying to become the one thing I swore to myself that I’d never do. when I think about it like that, it hurts and I’m scared, but when I think about it in light of what God wants and what God will give me the strength to do, I become a lot more secure and bold in it.
of course, trying to explain that to the head of the department in a public uni is rather difficult, so I usually stick to the “I love kids and want to help them in their time of need” answer.
please do not tell me you are going to be a priest.
a)I’m a girl/woman/lady/female
b)I’m not catholic
c)no
If not a priest you are studying then what? Why would you do what you not want to do?
I’m studying middle grade education (english and social studies). I’ve always wanted to be a teacher, but I’d much rather teach high school.
within the past year or so, God’s been giving me clear signs that he wants me in middle school ed. I really didn’t want anything to do with middle school, but the more I tune my heart to what God wants, the more he can work over my desires and make them his own. I’m still scared about working with such unstable packs of hormones, but I know that if I keep my focus on what God wants and what God can do with me, I’ll be able to do this and actually enjoy it.
there are many verses throughout the bible that I use to give me strength about such things. the typical “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” verse, or the “for I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you.” etc.
but think about the story of Jonah. God asked him to do somethign that he loathed so much that he ran out to sea. he was on the whole “haha! God can’t make me do anything if I"m surrounded by water!” train of thought. He wasn’t even happy after he did the things that God asked him to do. you know why? because his heart and mind was not aligned with God.
one of my favorite verses of the bible is Jonah 4:9:
But God said to Jonah, “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”
“I do,” he said. “I am angry enough to die.”
that makes me laugh. the book ends with Jonah being a very bitter man.
I totally trailed off my point.
don’t be concerned so much with what you want to do or what your parents want for you. find what God wants for you to do. God knows you better than you know yourself. he knows your interests, he knows your tallents, and he knows what your capable of beyond what you’ve even seen in yourself. He’ll put you in a place that will use all those things if you just let him take control. and when you willingly give up your life to him and let him put you somewhere, you will enjoy it a lot more than when he has to make a fish eat you just to get you to do what he wants you to do.
Once again I will ask you said question “How do you know?”. Your God may not be the right one. I come from the Eastern thought and it is said generally that “everything” has a bit of God in him/her/it. Your God is what YOU want it to be. It is a subjective facet of most peoples life as you have said before. So, this matter of factly way in which you address subjects worries me.
“The religions we call false were once true.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
You say you understand God and his meanings at times yet you say he is above understanding? Our level is as high of a level as we can prove. Man is the epitomy of knowledge so is making a personal God so bad for those who do? Or would you prefer them to be soulless and nihilistic?
“Petty intellect”? I love how you degenerate people. Anyways, God is a construct of man. God is a word, an idea, if there is anything greater than us how did it get the name God? Does it want to be called God?
Do you understand God? Can you? You act like you do. Perhaps you are blinded by your dogmatic following to be in touch with God?
And I say the same about religious people. Psuedo religious people tell others how to pray while religious people praise those who pray.
Why seek when he is all around us?
"We can understand the world as it is
without leaving our home.
We can understand the world as it might be
without peering dreamily out our window.
The further we go,
the less we know. "
-Verse 47
Tao Te Ching
But despite this thought, I ask you have you traveled the world in search of God? Studied all the worlds religions? Why are you qualified to say what god is or isn’t? I get so frustrated with people’s self- righteousness in life. As you implied in the “Religion is Illogical” you attack science by saying it has no set laws. Well, how can you know God has them?
In Dust and Ashes,
Teaching is a very noble profession. Intuition is a good thing. I wish you the best of luck.
If you do not like, nor want to be a middle school teacher, then perhaps you should follow what you are telling yourself. Perhaps you are being tested within for your strength. High school and middle schools need strong educators not ones that have no passion. If you have no passion for middle school then you do yourself and your students an injustice.
If you wish to honor your admirable dream of being an educator, follow where your heart lies. In doing so you honor the love you have been given and taught to share. Who you impress is hardly important wether it is your god or your parents. If Your God or your parents love you then they will allow you to follow the truth of your soul, for that is most benificial for all involved. Don’t crave acceptance from those that know you best, allow them to change and grow also by learning to accept you. Bending yourself can break you.
I believe middle school is no harder then high school to educate. Middle school kids are more likely to be easier, they are not fully rebellious yet.
Last thing that concerns me then;
My heart tells me that One you can do justice for all and protecting and promoting the welfare of others, or the other, educating people and help them to seek wisdom, freeing them from bondage of sin.
This is the point where the person, TheQuestion, comes and tell me I am confuse and crazy.
I don’t agree with what you say on many accounts…pretty much everything really.
for one, I do have a passion for teaching middle schoolers, I’m just scared crapless about it for several untold reasons and so far I havn’t heard one encouraging word about it. If I knew that I was alone in this, I wouldn’t do it because I know that I wouldn’t be able to handle it. but I know that God is with me and that he’ll give me all that I need to do the very best at it.
secondly, I don’t believe in trusting in my heart, or believing in my heart, or following my heart. the bible says that the heart, like the flesh, can be very wicked. I’m still learning to do as the bible says and “gaurd my heart” against all kinds of evil and I have to give my heart and all its desires over to God daily in order to keep it clean. following my heart would be idol worship, selfish, and ungodly. I follow God and ask him to train my heart to follow him as well.
thirdly, I’m not trying to impress anyone. I’m only trying to obey God and my parents (this concept is rather new to me) and honor them in what I do. impressing someone is shallow. I’m not putting on a show, I’m practicing devotion.
fourthly, I don’t crave acceptance. I’m used to be the outcast on so many levels it’s past funny. I’ve already been accepted just the way I am by the people that matter most to me and that’s all that’s important in that area.
lastly, from what I hear, middle school is and was hell for pretty much everyone that went through it or has to teach it. the only person that hasn’t said that is the head of the middle school ed. department and even she said that it’s going to be extremely hard and that I have to really want this in order to do it. everyone acknowledges that it’s almost purely due to their hormonal stage. I’m expecting the absolute worst and as long as I’m prepared for the absolute worst, I think I’ll be ok because anything less will be a pleasant suprise.
I’m not quite sure I understand what you’re saying.
All things capable of fathoming self-determination have a right to it.
If Jesus really said:
“If I honor myself, that honor is nothing.”
I will say to him these words:
“The world is the creator of the self. Forsaking the self is forsaking the world. Honoring thyself is honoring the world. You see selfish and arrogant Jews all around you, thus you try to fight it with your preaching of self-denile and submission.”
But little did he realized that long after his apostacy and critic of the pharasies and the unjust Jews came to an end, his denounciations and judgments would still be called down upon the innocent, as the church abused his name and his message.
The corruption within his religion runs deep. Never once in history was it completely filtered out from the mass.